Is Sunny Lennarduzzi’s Authority program worth it? My honest review.

I signed up for Sunny Lennarduzzi’s Authority Accelerator program in November 2024 (now renamed Authority.io, which includes Authority Ascent and other related programs).

I have some choice thoughts about whether it’s worth it, and the value I received from it.

Please keep in mind that I signed up in November 2024 for “Authority Accelerator” which has since been rebranded to “Authority Ascent”.

I have access to the new Authority Ascent content, but have not yet gone through it in full detail to see how much about it has changed.

From what I have skimmed through at this point, the process hasn’t changed fundamentally, but it now relies much more heavily on AI tools and now covers only the FIRST step of the overall Authority.io strategy.

TL;DR While Sunny’s Authority program lays out a very clear roadmap for taking your expertise and turning it into a high-ticket course program, it personally wasn’t worth it for me.

Why? Here’s my reasons.

1. Other solutions

There are plenty of other people offering similar road maps for a lot less.

Think Hayley Johnson, Molly Keyser, Danielle Pulu, Amy Portfield or any of the others selling course systems. They’ll do the same thing for less.

You REALLY don’t need to pay the 8K+ price being asked for this course system.

2. Their sales process

Their sales process focuses heavily on the outcome, and what you will achieve, but is very light on details.

I bought into the outcome – which I still want – and I even asked at the time whether I would be required to do anything I was not comfortable with, and was promised “no, absolutely not!”

This turned out to be incorrect, which I really didn’t – and still don’t – appreciate one bit.

3. Inflexibility

Their process (laid out below) requires that you:

A) book 50+ video call interviews and

B) do sales calls from here to eternity to continue selling your program

Although I did my darndest to follow their process for about three months, when I got to the interviews, I did three of them and realised that HANDS DOWN this was something I could NOT do.

Not because I wasn’t capable, but because it does not suit my personality ONE BIT, and it would have destroyed my health to continue.

So if you don’t want to do things exactly as THEY spell them out, then you’ve basically wasted your money.

4. Their support

Their support team is very experienced in their system, but nothing else.

If you ask questions outside of their system, they’re not that interested.

And they’re very good at trying to appease you without actually giving you straight answers.

They’re all very nice about it, but if you get “difficult” (ie ask pointy questions) they deflect very effortlessly back onto you (“It’s YOUR business”), thereby avoiding actually giving you the help you need.

I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there’s something not quite genuine about the way they say things.

5. Changing the rules

When I bought Authority Accelerator, one of the big selling points was lifetime access to the community and support.

Now, less than 12 months down the track, they “rebranded” and “restructured” which is cute speak for “we’re changing the rules and removing what you paid for and you get no say in it”.

The community I paid to be a part of is no longer active (I can still read all of the old posts, there’s just nothing happening in there any more), and the new “Ascent” community only offers access for 12 months (or maybe a bit longer if you’re struggling to get your product launched).

So I didn’t even get what I paid for. And that REALLY stings.

And when I questioned them about it, they wanted me to get on a call with their #1 sales expert.

Why? So they can “sell” me on the new structure and how it’s better for me? No, thank you.

6. Their system

And now the meat and potatoes.

My contract with them (which is kind of irrelevant seeing as they breached it anyway when they changed the rules, and yes, I read it in 100% detail, and in my opinion this change contravenes those terms, but I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong and this is just my opinion based on my personal experience), prevents me from sharing specific details, but you don’t need specifics to get the idea.

Here’s a rough outline of what the AA system will ask you to do:

1. Define your niche (they have an AI tool to help speed this up) and what transformation you want to offer people
2. Do market research (again, their AI tool speeds this up, but it’s by no means perfect)
3. Conduct 50 real-time video interviews with real people who have the problem you want to solve (there’s a script and specific questions for these calls)
4. Use their answers to create a rough outline of your program (your “POP”)
5. Get back to the people you interviewed and try to sell them on your beta program (at least 10 if you can)
6. Run the program live for those initial people (do this a second time if need be)
7. Use their feedback to refine the program and turn it evergreen
8. Create content that drives people to your program / lead generation system (YouTube is the preferred platform for content creation)
9. Get on calls with these people and sell them into your program
10. Repeat Steps 8 and 9 forever

As I said, I can’t share specific details of their process, but I can tell you that:

• There is a script provided for the interviews
• There is a script provided for the sales calls (mostly the same as the interview script)

And unless I’ve missed it somewhere, there is nothing in the current version of the program around teaching you how to create lead magnets, set up email nurture sequences or plan and edit videos / content creation.

While this process is great in theory and has worked wonders for some (see all of their testimonials on their YouTube channel) there are a few places where it can fall down.

• If you’re not clear on your niche and your expertise, this can take a long time to figure out, including pivots and wrong turns
• Getting 50 people to “interview” is no mean feat, especially if you’re an introvert like me – networking is just NOT my thing, so my network is tiny and reaching out to people in this way for this purpose actually destroys my mental well-being
• Selling people in-person into your program takes practise, and while it’s definitely a skill that I can appreciate, and it’s not one I ever, EVER want to learn

While I was in the community I saw many people struggling with various stages of the process, so it’s not something that’s easy to do successfully, despite the way they may talk about it.

It’s going to take a LOT of work and possibly stepping well outside of your comfort zone.

7. The pricing model

The success of this system is contingent on you pricing your program as a high-ticket offering. This means starting at a minimum course price of 1K, but quickly moving to 2K, 5K and beyond, as you build your results and testimonials.

You are STRONGLY discouraged from setting your initial “POP” price as low as $500 (“but this is YOUR business, so you get to make the rules”).

If you want to create a high-ticket, high-touch, high-sales offering, this will show you one way to do it.

8. “But wait, there’s less…”

In addition, when I looked more closely at the new curriculum, I noticed that Authority Ascent covers less of their overall strategy than Authority Accelerator did, which makes sense, because now Ascent is now positioned as just the starting point, and if you want to move to the next level, you have to pay more.

This means that the “Accelerate” (YouTube content creation) and “Scale” (hiring a team and automation) pieces that were in Authority Accelerator are no longer included in the base program (Authority Ascent).

Authority Ascent is now laser focused around identifying your expertise, conducting interviews, creating your course prototype and making sales, and nothing more.

And rumour has it that the price being asked is even higher that what I originally paid (but it’s only a rumour and I can’t confirm it).

Is Authority.io worth it?

This is a very clearly laid out system, that if you follow to the T, no matter how long it takes, you are likely to get results, eventually. Probably.

It may take longer than you think, and may get frustrating at times, but if you are willing to follow their process and create the type of product they recommend (the one single product they recommend), then this might suit you.

They offer a very exact system to create a high-ticket program for any niche, and the community and Authority team offers great support and expertise for their specific process.

(Although the new Authority Ascent version of the program has limited-time access to the community and support. You have to upgrade if you want to continue after that.)

But if you don’t want to follow their system exactly as laid out, you’re kind of screwed.

I wish that they had provided more details BEFORE I signed up as to exactly what I would be required to do, because I would never have signed up had I known more about what would be asked of me.

Hopefully the above details will you help make a more informed decision.

To be clear, I DID get some value out of joining, in that I understand some of their steps more clearly, and the idea of the “zero to hero” transformation, and the general ideal of define-research-ask-test-refine-evergreen (which everyone teaches anyway, just in their own way).

So it wasn’t a complete waste of money. But it certainly wasn’t worth what I paid for it, ESPECIALLY after they changed the rules and removed what was promised under our original agreement.

The lesson here for me is that not all business models fit all people.

In other words, there isn’t a “one size fits all” business model, no matter what ANYONE says.

You have to do the work to figure out whether this specific model is going to suit your personality, your goals and your lifestyle.

I came across this awesome video by Layla at Process Driven that helped me understand this even more clearly:

I also realised that I needed to let go of the idea that someone else has all the answers, or some kind of magic pill that will make me successful, because in reality, I already had everything I needed before I ever signed up for Authority  Accelerator.

I just have to keep plugging away for long enough to see results.

If you have any questions (including the exact price I paid for this course program at the time, plus what it’s rumoured to cost now) email me on contact@thebizpixie.com and I promise I’ll reply.